oups... I meant to add the comment about $ORIGIN (not really useful here) but also the fact that the binary python is built with the dependencies found via the library path (-L, for example) and the eventual run-paths (-R or -runpath) when not in the system paths.

As indicated by automatthias@, package managers such as pkgsrc, CSW, *ports and the like have their $PREFIX off of the system main path..  usually in /usr/pkg, /usr/local, /opt/local or something like that
(for unices and linux sort of systems, anyway).

My pkgsrc python2.7 binary has the following runpath:
```
richard@omnis:/home/richard$ dump -Lpv /opt/local/bin/python2.7 |grep RPATH
[12]	RPATH           /opt/pbulk32/gcc49/i486-sun-solaris2.11/lib/.:/opt/pbulk32/gcc49/lib/.:/opt/local/lib
```

What is being requested greatly simplifies things, and can probably be generalised to other ELF based systems too.

BTW I came across the issue as well with py-magic.